Can somebody power down this bad comedy?
Taika Waititi’s latest movie “Klara and the Sun” is basically an exceedingly lame dystopian comedy splice of “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” “Ex Machina,” and “M3GAN.” For a guy to give us some hilarious, offbeat comedies like “Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” “Jojo Rabbit,” and the recent “Thor” movies, he does a dull job with the talents and script, as if they were meant to be on a sitcom that would be cancelled after the pilot taping.
Now that I think about it, for a movie with humans and robots, I think all the characters are robots because of how they talk as if they were relying on Siri to read the scripts for them in their own voices.
The Friend Store, which opens to the tune of “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows,” has A.I. robots acting like mannequins until somebody buys them. They dress up like they’re fishing, making s’mores, hiking, jet-skiing, and juggling. It changes every day. And when the day is done, and they’re told to sleep, they just pretend sleep and lie on the floor. The store owner (Natasha Lyonne) has that red Miss Frizzle hair, looks happy but isn’t on the inside, and she tells them that if nobody is chosen, then they’re sent back to the factory to be destroyed and recycled.
The title robot Klara (Jenna Ortega) thinks her energy is provided by the Sun and talks to it like how David was speaking to a Blue Fairy statue in “A.I.” She keeps hoping and praying that she’ll finally find a friend. And she finally finds one: Josie (Mia Tharia), whose snooty mother (Amy Adams) doesn’t want obsolete models. But she thinks Klara is perfect. I think “Ron’s Gone Wrong” had a similar set-up, except that was a smarter and nicer cartoon than this.
The girl tells the robot that her sister is dead and she never met her, like she didn’t really care she had one in the first place. And the mother and housekeeper (Rachel House) are both mean to her-insulting her, calling her useless, and saying: “Stay in your lane.” And the only other human that is kindly to her is Josie’s robotic’s boyfriend Rick (Aran Murphy), who specializes in birds as if he’s remaking Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”
Josie is terminally ill, and Klara thinks the Sun can cure her, and that a plow is her enemy trying to block it from them. And the mother still keeps the robot and is trying to keep her daughter safe and make her irreplaceable. But if you ask me, she isn’t very convincing.
When it wants to go for that “Wizard of Oz” approach with the colors of the furniture, it’s not very appealing. And when it has to add scarecrow (Jesse Griffin) in the fields, he’s just a man running around like a crazy person. He’s far from Ray Bolger. I’m just glad “Lynch/Oz” came out before “Klara and the Sun,” because I wouldn’t want it to mention this mess. And while it was based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s book, it still acts like a Lewis Carroll story with the characters running around and acting all whimsical. At least the Mad Hatter wasn’t a robot.
Ortega and Adams have already proven themselves to be fine actresses. If you don’t believe me, see Ortega in “Scream” (2022) and “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” and see Adams in “Enchanted” and “Arrival.” Those examples have more heart and soul than this movie will ever have. In fact, it further proves my point about how useless A.I. is. And not even the usually effective Waititi can stir things up.
This movie runs for less than two hours, but I have to make this comparison again. “You Can See Everything” runs for less than three hours, while “Wildwood” runs for over two hours, and they were both great films. “Klara and the Sun” has no reason to be this long. And it has no reason for its existence.
☠️ Poison for the Mind (0/4)
